


Saudade

by Fweeble



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Day 6, F/F, M/M, Reincarnation, Tokyo Ghoul Week, badly written battle scenes, fairly graphic violence (teen rating), fantasy AU loosely based off the Fire Emblem franchise (specifically Awakening)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 21:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2444456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’ll curse you,” she cries desperately, gathering the cooling warmth against herself. “Your soul will never rest. You will search for me, every time, and you will return this world endlessly until you find me.”</p><p>--</p><p>In which Kaneki Ken won't let his love die again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Judgement: rebirth, forgiveness, hope, salvation  
> Death: beginnings, transformations
> 
> Saudade: (n) a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; "the love that remains" (OtherWordly on tumblr)
> 
> Thank you so much feverly for beta'ing and making sure even someone with know prior FE knowledge could understand what was going on! All mistakes you still see are due to my own error. ; u;

_“I’ll curse you,” she cries desperately, gathering the cooling warmth against herself. “Your soul will never rest. You will search for me, every time, and you will return this world endlessly until you find me.”_

 

_A bloody hand cups her cheek, begins to slide off, and she covers that small, cold hand in her warm one, clings to it. She curls into strands of gold, wets them with her tears. “So please, don’t leave me.”_

 

_The smile that graces the dancer’s face in unlike all the other smiles the performer ever wore, and the sorceress feels herself collapsing in on herself, an unbound tome thrown into the winds. This was never meant to happen. But the blood drips sluggishly from once-pink lips, the tell-tale gurgle of it present in every shallow breath, and she knows the other woman will leave her no matter how much she pleads._

 

_“At least, next time,” she begs, “Next time, let me save you.”_

 

\--

 

Kaneki surveys the field, sees the stranded pegasus knight and cleric retreat into a densely wooded area to the east. Between him and the two women are five brigands, four myrmidons, and two mages armed to the teeth. His bronze sword looks as if it requires more than just a little spit-shine and his thunder tome’s bindings look as if they may fail at any moment.

 

Clearly, these are favorable odds.

 

“Swing south!” He flings a bolt of lightning at the nearest brigand and is utterly disgusted with himself when he misses by several feet. With aiming skills like  _that_  he’ll have no chance of picking off the myrmidons. “I’ll take care of the brigands, pick off any myrmidon you can! Just reach me before the mages get you!”

 

One brigand descends upon him, axe swinging, but the others are undeterred with their chase as the two women flee further and further into the copse of trees. The myrmidons and mages will rout them at this rate and –Kaneki shields his eyes from the sun, squints off into the distance and sees what he thinks is a flash of crisp winter sky blue –it looks like the mages are armed with wind tomes. If they’re surrounded, the pegasus won’t be able to stay in the sky for long.

 

“SWING SOUTH! THEY’LL FLANK YOU!”

 

He pulls out his sword, manages to stumble his way into a dodge and sink metal into flesh, and twists the pommel as he pulls out. The wet thump of the brigand falling to the ground is satisfying. “What am I going to do,” he mutters as the knight continues to lead the cleric further and further to their deaths. He won’t reach them in time, the ruffians too far, the pegasus too fast, but the deaths of two innocent women, strangers though they may be, leave a bitter taste in his mouth. “I need to get them to trust me.”

 

The brigands have been waylaid by the dense foliage but the myrmidons and the mages have cut the two women off once they emerge from the tree and they will be penned in. Already, the winds begin to pick up, and Kaneki knows the fear the knight must feel. Images of bloody feathers, of bodies falling, of mangled corpses trickle past his mental dams and he runs, ignores the burn of his lungs.

 

He won’t let it happen.

 

\--

 

_In life, she had been untamable, a force of nature that could not be contained. Always moving, always laughing, always breathtaking. She was the most beautiful existence, the most treasured person, irreplaceable._

 

_Now, she lays pale and malleable, something to be rearranged and laid in the mutilated carcass of a dead tree, and it hurts, **it hurts**._

 

\--

 

There are only two brigands left and the knight has felled one myrmidon, but there has already been two narrow misses with winds, razor sharp and deadly, apt to take off a wing or a head if she slows just the slightest. Without the cover of trees, she is just a target for the mages. A bird with wings waiting to be clipped.

 

“Touka,” the cleric cries, “Let me down. You’re bleeding. I…I can’t heal you on here!”

 

“You’ll  _die_. I’m fine, it’s just a scratch.”

 

“Touka…”

 

Just one more kilometer, he can make it, he can –just a little more and he will be close enough to at least use his tome, to carve a small path for the two women.

 

But his muscles scream in protest, his throat closes up on him, his pace slows and he stumbles over his own feet as tries… tries to…

 

_There’s so much blood, so much, and it should be warm, blood is always warm –but she is cold, so cold._

 

A blade of wind cuts through a wing and the pegasus gives a startled cry, plummets to the earth, and Kaneki’s heart fails.

 

A brigand looms over the fallen women, axe raised over the prone cleric, over the determined knight who shields her friend with her flesh and bone.

 

He can’t reach them in time, he’ll fail, and once again there will be…

 

_Blood, blood, blood, he’s drowning, drowning in blood._

 

Kaneki’s heart stutters back into life when he sees a man charge into the fray from the south east, face pale with terror as he swings his lute. It splinters over the bandit’s skull. “ _Come with me!_ ” the man cloaked in yellow and green pleads to the knight, face white with fear as he tosses his ruined lute at an incoming myrmidon. The stranger gathers the fallen cleric into his arms, tries to avoid tripping over the fallen brigand as he breaks into a desperate run. “ _Please_ , we have to… God, there’s so  _many_.”

 

Kaneki can see the blond man making a beeline for him; can see the dark haired knight refuse to follow, to leave behind her pegasus, her friend.

 

The man looks terrified, but he stops. He takes a deep calming breath and –

 

Familiarity fills Kaneki, images of a halo of fair hair framing a laughing face, of silks colorful silks fluttering gracefully and tiny silver bells tinkling fill his mind.

 

 _You found me_ , an irrational part of him cries when he hears this stranger’s song, so somber and mournful, the sound of the end of something vast but the beginning of something wondrous.  _You found me._

 

It fills him with a burst of strength, energy he did not know he had in reserve, and he manages to sprint the last stretch, hand poised as he calls down lightning upon an encroaching myrmidon. Even the pegasus and its rider have found their second wind and, injured though they are, begin to limp after the singing bard.

 

Kaneki swears when his tome succumbs to wear and tear, pulls out his sword in its stead and barely manages to wedge himself between the last brigand and the wounded knight, even as she raises her lance in retaliation, left arm hanging limp and bleeding by her side. In his periphery, he can see the other man lay the cleric on the grass and pull out a vulnerary. “Oh, please wake up,” the blond whispers desperately, “Your friend needs you.”

 

“Guard them,” Kaneki orders the knight, “I’ll try to give you time to escape.”

 

_I’m not letting her die again._

 

“Protect them or I swear to god I will never forgive you,” he continues, bloodied and panting. He knows he won’t survive this, that he will fall here, but it’s okay, because this time, he saved her.

 

“I don’t take orders from you.” With finesse and accuracy, the knight spears the last brigand through the neck, yanks her lance back out with a look of disgust. She throws Kaneki a dark look. “I will die before I let anything happen to Yoriko.”

 

“The bard saved your lives.” He readies his sword and prepares for the oncoming storm of swords and magic. “Keep him safe or I swear to the gods your life is forfeit too.”

 

“Touka,” a soft voice reprimands before the knight can retort, “We owe them our lives.”

 

“You’re okay.” Anger bleeds from the knight’s body and she smiles, brittle but determined. “Run.”

 

“Of course not.” Soft healing light falls upon Touka and her cuts mend, her flesh knits itself back together. The cleric, Yoriko, turns to Kaneki, raises her staff, and his bleeding stops, the gaping wound in his side becomes a thin scar across his rib.

 

“We’re not leaving anyone behind.” The bard smiles brightly. “Although we’re totally going to have to rely on you two to save our asses. I’m afraid I’ve lost my lute to that hulking man over there and as powerful as I believe music to be, I don’t think it can stop a sword from gutting me.”

 

The last of the bandits are closing in –the two mages and the last myrmidon –and maybe they can survive this. Kaneki looks down at his sword, thinks it has only a few more swings left in it before it’s useless. Touka’s lance looks as if it may last awhile longer, but not very much.

 

Luck.

 

What they need is luck.

 

“And even if we don’t make it, I promise we’ll go down with the most valiant and heroic ballad I know.”

 

“We’ll survive,” Kaneki promises.

 

_I won’t let you die again._

 

\--

 

_She buries her love under a lilac tree with a promise:_

 

_I’ll protect you, always. I’ll never lose you again._

   
  



End file.
